1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sound generation device or package and an electronic musical instrument connectable to the sound generation device from its outside.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic musical instrument called as a musical synthesizer or a sound module which has an editing function of timbre parameters of a musical sound to be produced is conventionally known.
FIG. 1 shows a musical instrument of this kind. The instrument is constructed as one unit by a console unit 1 having a plurality of operation keys 1-1 and display unit 1-2 which are provided for a user to edit timbre parameters of a musical sound, and a sound source unit 2 for producing a sound signal having characteristics determined by the edited timbre parameters. In such an integrated musical instrument, the console unit 1 and the sound source unit 2 are connected closely and indivisible to allow the user to edit timble parameters of a sound to be produced from sound source unit 2 by operating the keys 1-1 while seeing the display unit 1-2.
Recently, another type of the electronic musical instrument system was developed. FIG. 2 shows a system of this type which includes an electronic musical instrument used for musical performing operation i.e., a key input operation, other electronic musical instruments used for sound generation, and communication means based on MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard for selectively connecting the musical instrument for the musical performing operation with one or more external electronic musical instruments for the sound generation. The electronic musical instrument for musical performing is often called as a MIDI controller or music controller.
In such musical instrument system, however, not the console unit 3 of the MIDI controller but the console units 5-1 to 5-3 of external instruments are used for editing the sound parameters of musical tones to be produced from the sound source units 6-1 to 6-3 in the external instruments.
The console unit 3 of the musical instrument used for the musical performing operation is effective only to its own sound source unit with respect to editing timbre parameters of a sound.
In order to allow a user to execute timbre editing operations for various types or kinds of sound source units by a common console unit 3, a plurality of unique editing programs are required for the respective sound source units. FIG. 3 shows such a system. This system needs an expanded memory 7 for storing a desired editing program of sound parameters compatible for a selected one of the sound source units 6-1 to 6-3, and an expensive floppy disk drive 8 for loading the editing program to the expanded memory 7 from a disk containing the program.